Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/381

Rh POLITICAL ECONOMY 365 in the Wealth of Nations calls him &quot; by far the most illus trious philosopher and historian of the present age,&quot; and who esteemed his character so highly that, after a friend ship of many years had been terminated by Hume s decease, he declared him to have &quot; approached as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.&quot; Tker. Josiah Tucker, dean of Gloucester (d. 1799), holds a distinguished place among the immediate predecessors of Smith. Most of his numerous productions had direct reference to contemporary ques tions, and, though marked by much sagacity and penetration arc deficient in permanent interest. In some of these he urged the impolicy of restrictions on the trade of Ireland, advocated a union of that country with England, and recommended the recognition of the independence of the United States of America. The most important of his general economic views are those relating to in ternational commerce. He is an ardent supporter of free-trade doctrines, which lie bases on the principles that there is between nations no necessary antagonism, but rather a harmony, of interests, and that their several natural advantages and different aptitudes naturally prompt them to exchange. He had not, however, got quite clear of mercantilism, and favoured bounties on exported manufactures and the encouragement of population by a tax on celibacy. Dupont, and after him Blanqui, represent Tucker as a follower of the physiocrats, but there seems to be no ground for this opinion except his agreement with them on the subject of the freedom of trade. Target translated into French his Important Questions on Commerce (1755). Sttart. In 1767 was published Sir James Steuart s Inquiry into the Prin ciples of Political Economy. This was one of the most unfortunate of books. It was the most complete and systematic survey of the science from the point of view of moderate mercantilism which had appeared in England. Steuart was a man of no ordinary abilities, and had prepared himself for his task by long and serious study. But the time for the mercantile doctrines was past, and the system of natural liberty was in possession of an intellectual ascendency which foreshadowed its political triumph. Nine years later the Wealth of Nations was given to the world, a work as superior to Steuart s in attractiveness of style as in scientific sound ness. Thus the latter was predestined to fail, and in fact never exercised any considerable theoretic or practical influence. Smith never quotes or mentions it ; being acquainted with Steuart, whose conversation he said was better than his book, he probably wished to keep clear of controversy with him. The German economists have examined Steuart s treatise more carefully than English writers have commonly done ; and they recognize its high merits, especially in relation to the theory of value and the subject of population. They have also pointed out that, in the spirit of the best recent research, he has dwelt on the special characters which distinguish the economies proper to different nations and different grades in social progress. Axm Coming now to the great name of Adam Smith (1723- foh. 1790), it is of the highest importance that we should rightly understand his position and justly estimate his claims. It is plainly contrary to fact to represent him, as some have done, as the creator of political economy. The subject of social wealth had always in some degree, and increasingly in recent times, engaged the attention of philosophic minds. The study had even indisputably assumed a systematic character, and, from being an assem blage of fragmentary disquisitions on particular questions of national interest, had taken the form, notably in Turgot s Reflexions, of an organized body of doctrine. The truth is that Smith took up the science when it was already considerably advanced ; and it was this very cir cumstance which enabled him, by the production of a classical treatise, to render most of his predecessors obso lete. But, whilst all the economic labours of the preceding centuries prepared the way for him, they did not anticipate his work. His appearance at an earlier stage, or without those previous labours, would be inconceivable ; but he built, on the foundation which had been laid by others, much of his own that was precious and enduring. Even those who do not fall into the error of making Smith the creator of the science, often separate him too broadly from Quesnay and his followers, and represent the history of modern economics as consisting of the successive rise and reign of three doctrines the mercantile, the physiocratic, and the Smithian. The last two are, it is true, at variance in some even important respects. But it is evident, and Smith himself felt, that their agreements were much more fundamental than their differences ; and, if we regard them as historical forces, they must be con sidered as working towards identical ends. They both urged society towards the abolition of the previously pre vailing industrial policy of European Governments ; and their arguments against that policy rested essentially on the same grounds. Whilst Smith s criticism was more searching and complete, he also analysed more correctly than the physiocrats some classes of economic phenomena, in particular dispelling the illusions into which they had fallen with respect to the unproductive nature of manu factures and commerce. Their school disappeared from the scientific field, not merely because it met with a political check in the person of Turgot, but because, as we havp already said, the Wealth of Nations absorbed into itself all that was valuable in their teaching, whilst it continued more effectually the impulse they had given to the necessary work of demolition. The history of economic opinion in modern times, down to the third decade of our own century, is, in fact, strictly bipartite. The first stage is filled with the mercantile system, which, as we have shown, was rather a practical policy than a speculative doctrine, and which came into existence as the spontaneous growth of social conditions acting on minds not trained to scientific habits. The second stage is occupied with the gradual rise and ultimate ascendency of another system founded on the idea of the right of the individual to an unimpeded sphere for the exercise of his economic activity. With the latter, which is best designated as the &quot; system of natural liberty,&quot; we ought to associate the memory of the physiocrats as well as that of Smith, without, however, maintaining their services to have been equal to his. The teaching of political economy was in the Scottish universities associated with that of moral philosophy. Smith, as we are told, conceived the entire subject he had to treat in his public lectures as divisible into four heads, the first of which was natural theology, the second ethics, the third jurisprudence ; whilst in the fourth &quot; he examined those political regulations which are founded upon expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a state.&quot; The last two branches of inquiry are regarded as forming but a single body of doctrine in the well-known passage of the Theory of Moral Sentiments in which the author promises to give in another discourse &quot; an account of the general principles of law and government, and of the different revolutions they have undergone in the different ages and periods of society, not only in what concerns justice, but in what concerns police, revenue, and arms, and whatever else is the subject of law.&quot; This shows how little it was Smith s habit to separate (except provisionally), in his conceptions or his researches, the economic phenomena of society from all the rest. The words above quoted have, indeed, been not unjustly described as containing &quot;an anticipation, wonderful for his period, of general sociology, both statical and dynamical, an anticipation which becomes still more remarkable when we learn from his literary executors that he had formed the plan of a con nected history of the liberal sciences and elegant arts, which must have added to the branches of social study already enumerated a view of the intellectual progress of society.&quot; Though these large designs were never carried out in their integrity, as indeed at that period they could not have been adequately realized, it has resulted from them that, though economic phenomena form the special subject of the Wealth of Nations, Smith yet incorporated